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Winning Critical Acclaim
Alex Reynolds writes "'Are pop critics doing a good job? What does it mean to do a good job as a pop music critic? What is the difference between good and bad pop music criticism?' Loren Jan Wilson's innovative Pitchformula project takes the archives of music criticism and journalism from the popular Pitchfork web site and analyses them for commonalities in content, determining what attributes make for a 'good' or 'bad' evaluation. From this data, Wilson sculpted his compositional and performance technique to write rock music that should win critical acclaim."
I always read album reviews with a grain of salt. I've never been able to identify as to why, but I have never found popular music reviews to be very helpful to me. There are only so many ways that you can describe a particular song or expression of a genre and none of them adequately convey the way that I react to music. It's weird because I can read movie and book reviews and understand (and possibly agree on) what the writer is trying to say about the overall quality and purpose of the work.
But when a music review comes along, it just doesn't work. Is it because it's very difficult to describe the collaboration of multiple instruments in a linear and narrow format (i.e., the sentence)?
Along the same lines I've found that I have a very hard time describing music adequately to others. The only thing that occasionally succeeds (and happens to get used in music reviews all the time) is to compare the work to something that went before (like saying Limp Bizkit is a combination of funk and metal, or Britney is bubble gum sex pop). But then that's just a generic description, and not so much a statement on subjective quality.
I don't think I've ever bought an album where I thought a reviewer captured how I felt about the music after I listened to it. It will be interesting to see if this can be accomplished using what sounds like some sort of data mining exercise.
Thank God for try before you buy. This is the one thing that has me buying more music over the last year than the previous four or five.
The same issue applies to film reviews.
:-)
I'm the producer on an indie film currently in its festival run (shameless plug: http://www.qualityoflife-themovie.com) and it's amazing how much power these reviews have, particular with the industry press (Variety, Hollywood Reporter, etc.).
What's completely messed up is that these industry reviews can make or break a small indie film like ours. The big Hollywood bloatware films can just spend their way into the hearts and minds of American theaters.
We might not even get a chance to be in theaters if the industry reviews are poor. Distributors pay attention -- or not -- based on these reviews.
And why not? Distributor's lives are hectic and who has time to do detailed marketing analyses on thousands of new indie films each year...why not let the industry rags do it for you?
It's so frustrating since so many of these reviewers aren't the target audience for the films.
For instance, our film is a narrative feature about two graffiti writers in San Francisco. It's completely targeted at an underground youth audience...and those people that love that sort of thing. But the Variety reviewer was -- drumroll please -- a middle age dude who actually used the word "louts" in his review....and said the soundtrack was "molar-rattling".
Grandpa obviously woke up on the wrong side of the bed.....
In fact, younger audiences (14-25) generally love the film....but the acquisitions folks may never get the chance to know this. Etc etc.
We're just one example, but in the music industry, the same sort of thing is going on.
During the dotcom years, people talked about disintermediating the system such that people like us (media producers) could reach an audience (film viewer, music lovers, etc.) directly.
Sadly, the only thing that came of this (in a major way) is peer-to-peer, which doesn't exactly pay the rent. Also, filmmaking has a much different $$ structure than music. Musicians can make most of their money on live shows, while filmmakers make it all in the exhibition/distribution. Thus, peer-to-peer directly threatens us in a way it doesn't necessarily hurt musicians....But I'm sure some of our musician (or geek) friends might disagree in one way or another.
But that's a different debate....
- Brant
I as well am a freelance music writer, and though I'm tempted to link to my writing, I'd rather not have my editor freak out about her website crashing for "some completely random spike in traffic." mm-hmm.
/. link yet, because it combines everything that I love -- songwriting, music criticism and analysis of language. his database work is really good at nailing reviewer's cliches... in fact, while flipping through his data, I've found a lot of phrases that I gravitate towards that are listed and used here, too. this may mean much more to me than most of the people who read this, but as a guy who writes CD reviews, I have found the holy grail of how NOT to construct a CD review. it's like, "THESE are the cliche phrases - don't use them."
at any rate, this has to be my favorite
what's interesting, though, is that this isn't so much a breakdown of music critism as much as it is a breakdown of human expression. I think if you take a narrow field of ANY sect of criticism, be it paintings, music, or even sports, you're going to run into a very particular style of expression, of phrases, of whatever specifically TARGETS the audience that seeks said narrow field. I mean, I'm not going to review impressionist art and gripe about qualities befitting a lifelike landscape portrait... sure, both forms will have things in common as visual expressions, but the person who wants the Van Gogh and the person who wants the 'happy trees' are going to appreciate their choice for very different reasons. so the fact that his mp3s sound much like what a pitchfork critic loves isn't a surprise at all. it just proves the consistency of the listening audience in question.
now on to the music.
I downloaded the mp3s and was pretty impressed with the instrumental work. sometimes, the drumwork tries so hard to contrast the backing music that it begins to sound TOO uncomfortable, but other times, the contrast is compelling. otherwise, he has picked up the spirit of Pitchfork-style criticism, in which new music fuses analog and digital instrumentation by culling LOTS of older influences and smushing them together. important bands are the ones that do two things: first, they take a step towards doing something new and interesting with musical forms, and second, they root their sounds in pop precedents. you hear both experimentation and catchiness in Wilson's test songs.
those lyrics, on the other hand, don't come off so well, and I'm pretty sure the biggest reason is because a music critic considers lyrics as an integral part of the sound of a song, while Wilson takes the lyrical portion of songwriting and sets it outside the musical portion. Lyrics might be called "poetry," but even the greatest books of lyrics sound much worse when read than when sung with the intended music. Perhaps Pitchfork would eat these emo-sad lyrics up, but I see these lyrics in the same vein as NIN lyrics - sad for sad's sake, cliched, no real metaphoric weight.
I'd be interested to see a similar project used to analyze poetry criticism, and then have those "analyzed" lyrics ported into Wilson's songs. then he might have a computer-created winner.
all in all, you'd expect a totally robotic response to this sort of database study. "a song must have ingredient x and ingredients b, y and q. the computer has fused those ingredients together and here is the result." but one thing Wilson doesn't credit in his study is the ultimate human creation that is necessary. Wilson's statistics merely guided his own brain into composing what he felt matched the criticisms, which means the songs also matched the pop sensibilities that had to have been burrowed in his head for years. He's obviously a music fan and, even if he played "against his will," still applied his years of musical study and play to his final product. I wouldn't expect many other people in his shoes to apply his database results to music and come out in the end with mp3s that sound that listenable.
he hasn't rendered music critics obsolete or
Let me begin with a disclaimer: I used to work as a jazz journalist. I've written more than a few album reviews and artist interviews, and I've had personal experience with the politics of music criticism. If you want to write off my thoughts as the ravings of a jaded ex-critic, feel free.
Music critics suck. The problem is epitomized by the title, "music critic." I never referred to myself as a critic -- always a "jazz journalist." The difference? Information, as opposed to entertainment.
Music critics labor under the ignorant misperception that their job is to entertain. They confuse themselves with musicians -- often because they are in fact failed musicians. Their job isn't to entertain you. Their job is (or should be) to provide information about entertainment. When you finish reading an album review, you shouldn't say, "Wow, what a great read." You should say, "I learned something, and feel better informed to decide whether I might like this CD."
The following is a recent restaurant review from a Nashua, New Hampshire newspaper. I emailed it to a few friends last week, because it's a perfect example of something I've long bitched about:
Please list the pertinent facts you've learned from this article, which will inform your decision whether to eat at Michael Timothy's. What kind of food do they serve? Is it expensive? Are dungarees appropriate, or should I wear a tie?Aside from (1) bad writing, and (2) "critics" who simply ignore the tenets of journalism, the third problem with music criticism is editorial pressure. (The pressure begins with record labels and publicists, of course -- but the writers usually feel this indirectly, via their editors.)
I won't bore you with details, but I've got a million versions of the same story: Instead of writing about a new album that was terrific, featuring a new musician most readers didn't know, I was ordered to write about something my editor assigned -- which was inevitably a major-label release by an artists our readers already knew. "The other magazine will surely review this major-label release," I was told, "so we have to write about it, too!!" We never had room to educate our readers, but we always had ample space to compete with other publications and to fulfill publicists' requests.
Music criticism isn't treated like journalism. It's treated as publicity by editors, and as entertainment by writers. It's sad, shameful, and ultimately worthless. It's not a far throw from Hollywood journalism, where nary a story is printed without being cleared by numerous agents. On the rare occasions a bad review is printed, it's by design: An editor wants something witty, and he wants something controversial. If he thinks he can avoid pissing off a label, he knows nothing sells magazines like readers buzzing, "Hey, did you read the scathing review in the new issue?!?"
Frankly the most valuable music reviews you'll find nowadays are the customer reviews on Amazon. And that's saying something.
crib
Please don't read my journal